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PERSPECTIVES OF 
THE. 5PI^IT 




WILLAIW 'BROWN THORP 



x 






Class 

Book t_Li 

Copyright N? 

COPYWC.IIT DEPOSm 



Copyright 1910 

BY 

WILLARD BROWN THORP 



PERSPECTIVES OF 
THE SPIRIT ** •* 

By 
WILLARD BROWN THORP 




EXECUTED BY 

DENRICH 

PR.LS5 



CHULA VISTA 




K 



^ 






FOREWORD 

> T number of the paragraphs contained 
5__X in this book were printed in 1904 in 
a little volume called "A Basket of Frag- 
ments", which is now out of print. 
The interest awakened has encouraged the 
author, to issue this larger collection, in 
the hope that it may be of assistance to 
some who are striving to hold the courage 
of idealism under the pressure of the 
problems of modern life. 



San Diego, California, 
October, Nineteen Ten. 



Co. a 2 'J 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 




Expression .... 7 


The Task 1 






10 


Inclusiveness . 






15 


Frustrations . 






17 


Storm and Stress 






22 


Work and Play 






25 


Courage 






30 


Overcoming Evil 






33 


The Latent Good 






38 


Lending a Hand 






42 


Friendship 






46 


Sincerity 






52 


Faith 






56 


God . 






63 


Religion 






70 


Jesus 






78 


The Nativity 






86 


Death and Destiny 






89 



EXPRESSION 



^<HE suppression of a talent or a faculty is a 
V./ crime against nature. It is disobedience to the 
most personal command God has given to each of us. 
And there are deep laws of life by which such re- 
fusals avenge themselves. Many a fall from virtue 
can be traced to the suppression of a faculty. 



y^HE most normal and necessary act of faith is to 
KmJ believe that what God has given us is worth 
using, worth developing, worth making the very 
utmost of. 



^¥<HAT will the poets say when they look back 
vl/upon their poems? They will say: "We love 
them, for they came out of our very lives. But we 
are more than they. They are but altars that from 
time to time we builded for our worship. If you find 
them suited for your worship, you are welcome to 
use them. But our spirits have passed on." 



XT is by expressing what we are that we become 
what we may be. Utter your thought, and at 
once you are carried beyond it. Be true to yourself, 
and you will have a greater self to be true to. 



Perspectives of the Spirit 



>r<IIAT is thai thought which you call yours, and 
vl/are half ashamed to speak il because it is yours? 
fours it is qoI any more than some strange new 
planl thai you find in your garden. You did nol 

make it, yOU could n«»t make it ; you simply round 

it there in your garden. So it is when you dimly 
Peel an idea pushing its Leaf up through the boU 
in thai little enclosure of the spiritual world which 
is under your personal care and observation. Thai 

is n<>i yours; that is God's, one of God's hidden 
things getting itself up to the Light through you. It 
is yours only to tend it and give it a chance to grow, 

and above all to give it free and brave expression. 

^<IiK thought that is in you may he only a frag- 
V-^ merit of the truth. But it is your fragment, the 
fragment your life was meant to express. Trust God 
that in the action and reaction with other fragments 
from other lives it will do its work in the world. 
V«>ur thought given free and sincere expression may 
be a syllable in some great word which the spirit of 
Gk)d is spelling out to this generation. 

©B not so conceited as to imagine that you are 
ahead of your times. The same forces that have 
made you have also made the times. 

QEVEB fear that no one will need what you can 
say, whal you can do. what you ean he. There 
will be those who need just that ami need it more 
than anything else. 



Expression 



XT may be that the contribution yon are to make 
to human life is just to ask a certain question, 
to make men ask it, to press it home to the very life. 
There are some men who stand in the community 
asking fundamental questions about the Tightness of 
things. And in their presence others have to ask 
those questions. 



OO you think you can keep it secret, your creed, 
your view of life? There are no such secrets. 
Infallibly they make themselves felt through all dis- 
guises. As we grow older the mask wears thinner, 
and the face, the voice, the whole habit of the man, 
betray, whether he will or not, the quality of his 
soul. 



I^nHE supreme test is old age. That is where a 
W-/ man's sin is sure to find him out. Then, if never 
before, he becomes a living epistle known and read 
of all men. He who at seventy or eighty finds him- 
self admired and beloved by those about him, so that 
people like to be with him and feel that he is a bless- 
ing to them, may be perfectly sure that his life has 
been a success. 



THE TASK 



XT is unt given any man to Bee his perfected self. 
The statue OD which \\v are working is veiled 
from us. Only mighty impulses of the soul bid us 
"Strike here, and here", with mallet and chisel. 
Some day the veil will be Lifted, and we shall see how 
all these blows have been shaping the statue. 

ODB ideals are prophecies, forecast ings of our 
destiny. They are high necessities that are laid 
upon us. They are the way (Jod has of letting us 
know beforehand that which we are destined to be. 
There is one sense in which one may rightly be a 
fatalist. — the sense that enables him to say: "This 
of which I have dreamed, this to which my whole 
nature points, is what some day I shall be. It is 
written in the very stars and cannot fail." 

XT is necessary to dream ; it is necessary to stand 
long at the wishing-gate ; it is necessary to build 
castles in Spain. There should be time and space 
allowed for these things. They are indications, 
pointii gs of the life in the direction it would take. 
They are the soul beginning to declare itself. 

J^vHE question you cannot gel away from is the 
X^poinl of growth in your life. It is your soul 
reaching oul Cor the truth it needs. Thank God for 



The Task 11 



it, and believe that in honestly meeting it you are 
saving your soul. Let no man shame you out of it 
because it does not happen to be his question. The 
importance of a question is measured first of all by 
its relation to the life of the man who is asking it. 
Let no man, then, despise the question of his own 
soul, or the question of another man's soul. 

Y~~f MAN dreamed he was in a library and saw 
U there on the shelves his own biography. With 
trembling fingers he took it down and ran over the 
pages till he reached the present moment in his life. 
But he could go no farther. The next leaf was so 
fixed that he could not open it. 

l^yHERE is a jewel set within the heart of each one 
V-^of us. It is a crystal after its own peculiar 
order and with a law of its own. It was there when 
you were a little child, and it is there today. It may 
be soiled and marred and buried under rubbish; it 
may be despised and rejected of men. But it is 
there, the same always, preserving its crystalline 
identity. It never grows old. The years of the 
future will make no difference ; and death will make 
no difference ; and all eternity will make no differ- 
ence. It is the divine, imperishable, peculiar treas- 
ure of your individuality. 

^\HE great Shipbuilder has put into your hands a 
V-/ craft designed with the greatest care. It may 
not be the swiftest or the strongest or the largest; 



12 Perspectives of the Spirit 



but it was built tor a certain purpose. He has put 

you as captain OD board; and this is the trial trip. 
This being the case, who arc you, that you pro- 
ceed to find fault with the way your vessel is built 
and loaded 1 Lei us atop making apologies for 

0Ur8elvefl as God has made us. Let as sail our V( 

like the captain of a cup-defender, determined to get 

the very utmost out of her. and proud of our maker 
and builder, who is God, 

>r^K are continually retreating behind our limita- 

vl/tions and saying, Thus far and no farther can I 
go. God 18 ever laying His hand upon us and thrust- 
ing us out into the <>pcn, saying, You can be more 
than you are; you must be more than you are. 

CONSCIENCE is the instinctive protest of the 
soul against that which threatens the integrity 

of its life. It is the spiritual organism doing in its 
spiiere the very thing that the physical organism 
does, namely, spurning the things that menace it 
and demanding the things that give it life. If we 
art 1 growing, we are making new conscience all the 
time because we are making new moral tissue. The 
soul is advancing its lines into new territory, and is 
mutely asking i'^r protection. 

ONE of the penalties of choosing a low aim in life 
is that one is in danger of outliving it. His life 
L r M-s on. but his purpose is left behind; — accom- 
plished <»r Frustrated, it is left behind. Upon his lips 



The Task 13 



are those saddest of words, "I have had my day". 
And all because he did not set out with a purpose 
great enough to employ the whole of his career. 

i¥^E thought we had gained the summit. But when 
\mJ the mists cleared away, we discovered that we 
were only on one of the lower peaks, and there was 
the great summit towering high above us. We 
should have to descend a weary way, lose much we 
thought we had gained, and then climb far up again. 
The day was spent, and we decided to give over the 
attempt. So often it is in life. We have arrived at 
something, and called it the summit because in that 
direction we could go no higher. But if we had been 
climbing on the great mountain which God meant us 
to ascend, we should be climbing still, struggling 
upward toward something that is above the clouds. 

JOME tasks are definite, like the learning of a 
"lesson, the reading of a book. But the great 
task is endless. It is nothing less than the liberation 
and fulfilment of a soul. And the reward is the 
possession of that soul in the measure of liberation 
and fulfilment which at any moment has been at- 
tained. Is it not enough? 

^^nHE destiny of each man is determined not by 
V-/ some arbitrary decree of Providence, but by the 
quality of his own nature. Thereby he draws to 
himself the kind of experience and the manner of 
environment that is peculiarly his own. 



14 Perspectives of the Spirit 



XT is truer lhan we realize 1 , that we create our 
Surroundings, that we make our environment, 
attracting thai which belongs to us and repelling 
thai which does not belong to us. There may be 
some things in our circumstances which are rigid 
and beyond our power to alter; bul the greater part 
is fluid and responsive to influences that proceed 
from within our souls. In the long run our sur- 
roundings become shaped to us like a close-fitting 
garment. 



INCLUSIVENESS 



XN man nature is trying on the garment of per- 
sonality. The first effect is a sense of isolation. 
His personality seems a secret, private thing separat- 
ing him from all else. His instinct is to draw apart 
and look out with a certain suspicion upon these 
other beings akin to him yet strangely alien. He 
goes about armed, not knowing who may betray him. 
Proud, ashamed, timid, sensitive, the soul moves 
about, looking for some one whom it may trust. 



OUR life is not some little, flickering spark hid 
away in the center of our bodies; nor does it 
merely reach to our finger-tips. Our life is as large 
as the circle of our relationships. We are a part of 
all we know and all we love. To know a thing is 
to extend the borders of our life to include it. To 
love a person is to include him, to take him up into 
our very life, so that we suffer with his pain and 
rejoice with his joy, so that whatever happens to 
him happens to us. In the supreme moments of 
life we know that this is true. 



|^<HE extent of our life is measured by the area 
KmS over which we are able to feel and to act. 
Where we can feel and act, there we are. The tele- 
phone gives a curious experience of this extension of 



16 Perspectives of the Spirit 



personality. A public speaker feels and is felt in 
every part of his audience; in intense moments his 
personality pervades the room. So the personality 
of a great leader pervades the nation. So God per- 
vades the univera 



XT is one of the marks of the divine within us, 
that we would he inclusive even as God is in- 
elusive. The astronomer, reaching out with his tele- 
BCOpe, the naturalist, peering through his microscope, 
the explorer leaving his bones in arctic wastes, all 
testify to the power of that inward urge which bids 
man make his life co-extensive with the life of God. 



i^<I]K life of the tree is ever in the outer circle, just 
V-/ underneath the bark. All that is within repre- 
sents the tree's past. It is there, but it is transcended. 



nOW small and petty our old prejudices look to 
us! How cheap our former admirations seem! 
How plain it is that we broke our alabaster box upon 
heads that were not worthy of our anointing! And 
the meaning of the change is that in our growth we 
are ever drawing larger and larger circles of inter- 
est ; and as the larger interest becomes our own, the 
smaller loses its hold upon us. 



FRUSTRATIONS 



Yr<OW often when the hand of man has made some 
,L! huge rent in the web of life, or some ugly snarl 
in its threads, the hand of God gently and patiently 
takes the havoc that has been wrought, and makes 
it a point of departure for some new design of 
beauty, until in a little time even the temporary 
disturbance looks as if it had been a part of the 
original plan. 



>T^HY is it that people who have suffered have 
\ks strange power over us ? I cannot share my grief 
with him who has not grieved. I cannot tell my sin 
to him who has not sinned. It is not simply for 
counsel, it is for comprehension, that we go to those 
who have been through much. And is it not worth 
while going through things, if by being lifted up you 
can draw men unto you, touch their hearts, uncover 
their thoughts? 



SOMETIMES we covet a certain hardness of 
heart. If one had no ear for music, then dis- 
cords would not annoy. If one had no passions, then 
one would have no struggles. But such a wish is a 
refusal of the cup of life ; it is a wish in the direction 
of death. Sensitiveness of feeling, the capacity for 
keen, intense experience whether of pleasure or of 



18 Perspectives of the Spirit 



pain, is the \*-vy measure of our life. It is part of 
the penalty of being alive. 



iriK strike the minor chord too much. We nurse 

vjy our dpnbtfl and fears. We cry over our liv» 

over a story thai turns out wrong. We allow our- 
Belves to think it is all a dark and awful tragedy. 

We pit\' ourselves in OUT hard lot, — when wc are 
simply having a lVw of the troubles that arc common 
to all life. I, ft us learn Paul's lesson, and sing the 
Bong of life in a major key. 

HBT us not repine because our hearts are not 
always bathed in sunlight and joy. Dark] 
and light both have their place in the order of 
nature. The sunset and the sunrise, the most glori- 
ous pageants in nature, we owe to this alternation. 
The day means more because the night has been. 
And there are some processes of growth which pro- 
ceed best under the mild light of tile stars. 



ffi 



AY it not be that we shall see at the end that not 
a chapter in our life's book could be omitted, 
not even the darkest, — that every turn in the road 
had to be taken and all the devious way gone 
through? 



XT seemed as if our path led right up to a beau- 
tiful flower-bed, and we cried, "Eureka! I have 
found it". And then a restraining hand was laid 



Frustrations 19 



upon us, and we were told it was not for us, And 
when we rose up from the earth and brushed away 
our tears, we saw nothing before us but a path. And 
it led on and on. Some day we shall find what it is 
leading us to, Even now we find it bringing us to 
higher levels, wider vistas. Sometimes at a turn of 
the road we can look far down and see in the dis- 
tance that flower-bed where we would fain have 
ended our journey, It looks very small to us now, 
and we are glad of the Hand that restrained us and 
thrust us forward on the path, and of the Voice that 
said, "I have some better thing in store for you". 

i^jHE prayer is denied. And being denied, it be- 
%**/ comes a stronger prayer. It covers a wider area. 
It comes to mean more things, far more than we 
dreamed of at first. The door at which you knocked 
was at first a little door, and it did not open. You 
kept on knocking, and it became a larger and larger 
door. It would take a very large door now to let 
your spirit in. It was better that the little door 
did not open. 



^\HE little stream was flowing down to the sea 
KLs unhindered, — very pretty, very happy, that is 
all. But one day they hindered its flowing, and more 
and more they hindered it, until a great dam reached 
across the canyon, and the stored-up flood of the 
little stream became a blessing to all the valley 
below. So when one sees a great life, with stored-up 
strength and wisdom and sweetness from which 



20 Perspectives of the Spirit 



many draw, one may be sure that many Little rivulets 
and perhaps some pretty Strong life-currents of 
desire have been hindered in their course, that there 

mighl be this accumulation of power and blessing. 



^<IIK higher work of the world is Largely done by 

V-/the power of transmuted affection, just as the 

wheels of the great power-plants at Niagara are 
turned by the transmuted beauties and sublimities 

of the cataract. We would not have it all trans- 
muted. That would strip life of its sweetness. Yet 

it is true that out of the bereavements of love the 
world is being redeemed. 



HEAR not, troubled, trembling, despairing soul ! 
Thy very heart, with all its tumult and Longing 
and doubt and fear, is the place where the Spirit of 
God is working within thee, setting thee free from 
the Tetters that bind, thrusting thee forth into Larger 
life, Lifting thee up into higher life. 

^<IIK problem of forgiveness is vastly more than 
V-X whether I shall forgive my brother yonder who 
has defrauded me. It is whether I shall forgive the 
world which has defrauded me. its systems and con- 
ventions of which I am the victim. Nay more, it is 
whether I shall forgive the great God of the universe 
for the calamity, the bereavement, the deformity of 
mind or body, that has befallen me. Shall I forgive 
Him'/ or shall I harden my heart and curse Him? 



Frustrations 21 



That was Job's problem, and it is at some time the 
problem of every man. 



B BLOW is struck you. I care not whence it 
comes, — from your neighbor, from the cold 
world, or from out the clear sky of that ultimate 
mystery we call God. It staggers you that men 
should be so false, so heartless, — that God should 
be so still. Then you wait. And perhaps, if you are 
true and steady and able to receive it, somehow out 
of that very experience comes an enlargement of 
your soul. You are able to see around it and be 
reconciled. 



HAVE you never observed how, passing through 
a great and absorbing and costly experience, in- 
stead of being crippled for your daily work, you find 
an inspiration for it? You bring a nobler and greater 
soul into its every activity. You are lifted above 
its little frets and worries. Is it not often true that 
we find the solution of our smaller problems not 
by fixing our attention upon them, but by challeng- 
ing some great problem that seems even beyond our 
strength? The tide that floats the big steamship 
shall float all the little sailing craft as well. 



STORM AND STRESS 



j^^HE strong man is he who in the midst of the 
^^emergencies and contingencies of Life is able to 
face with composure cither outcome, saying within 
his soul, "Whatever happens, I shall not be dis- 
mayed; the essential movement of my life shall not 
be blocked. I should like this thing, but I can do 
without it and win." 



>T^H catch at straws when we are in trouble, at 
\U schemes and contrivances, at pretences and 
make-believes. It is not thus that we shall win our 
victory. We must stand upon our feet and lay hold 
of great principles. 



^rtHATEVEE the storm in which your spirit may 
vl/ be, it is possible Tor you to rise up within your 
soul and speak the word that shall bring the inner 
victory, the inner peace. And when the inner peace 
has come, the outer tempests soon subside, or beat 
ineffectually against the bulwarks of the soul. 



9 PRAYER for the hour of adversity: "0 God, 
help me to come to my true self. Spare me not 
the blows of disaster that may be needed to bring 
me to myself. Deliver me not from the consequences 
of my deeds. Let me encounter them, that I may 



Storm and Stress 23 



know by bitter experience that to which they lead. 
Only grant that in the hour of trouble I be not 
wholly cast down, but that its meaning may be so 
plain that it shall rouse me from my dreams and 
bring me to myself." That is a brave man's prayer, 
and he who prays it with all his soul is invincible. 

Y^COW is it that in the midst of the discordant 
A—Z voices of life a man is able to fall back upon 
the sense of truth and rectitude in his own soul, and 
find thus a deep peace and security? He is envious 
about nothing, afraid of nothing. What is it that he 
is appealing to? What is it on his side that is so 
strong ? 

j^jHERE is a certain exultation of spirit in which 
K*J a man may approach his life burden and claim 
it, crying, It is mine, no man shall rob me of it ; it is 
mine to carry, and carry it I will, proudly, bravely, 
unfalteringly, to the end. 

JTOP grumbling because you have a burden. It 
is a part of life ; it is not meant that you should 
be without one. Take what comes to you and bear it. 
Stop envying your neighbor because his load is not 
so heavy as yours. You do not know what his load 
is. The chances are that to him it seems about as 
heavy as he can bear. 

^<HE burden seems to be an evil, and the man is 
V-/ever praying to be relieved of it. But the day 
of relief never comes. If the burden leaves him in 



24 Perspectives of the Spirit 



form, it is only to return in another; they are 
all different tonus of the same burden. And finally 
he discovers thai his characteristic burden is like 
. a necessary pari of his life, 

X' d like a paradox, and yet it is true: 
We have hardly strength to do what we are 
doing, and yet we have strength to do a great deal 
more than we are doing. The challenge of a great 

task, that is what we need. 

^<IIK great lawyer makes his motion, and it is 
V-/ denied. He takes exceptions, and they are over- 
ruled. He argues his case, and perhaps it goes 
against him. Hut what of that? It is all in the day's 
work. And he proceeds upon his course with all the 
strength of one who knows full well the vocation for 
which he was chosen and will not swerve from the 
full discharge of it. 

^rtllKX once a man has made the discovery that 
VAX nothing can defeat him, that nothing can pre- 
vent him from putting forth the thing that is in his 
soul, — from speaking his word, doing his kind of 
work, gathering about him his sort of a world. — 
then a great peace comes over his soul. After the 
big world has smashed his little world a few times. 
and he has picked himself up and gone ahead and 
re-created it. he is no longer afraid of what may 
happen. Be knows what Jesus meant when he said. 
'*!'< Btroy this temple, and in three days I will build 
it again." 



WORK AND PLAY 



i^jHE supreme romance for every man is the woo- 
Wxing and winning of his work, and the wedding 
of his life to the divine idea of which that work is 
the expression. The great sorrow is to see that work 
only when it is too late. The great sin is to let it slip 
through one's hands because one has not courage to 
let all else go and grasp it. 



© 



HE qualities a man puts into his work he puts 
into his soul. 



^<HE important thing is not the size of one's work, 
KmJ hut the quality of it. He who can speak well to 
fifty people can address five hundred. He who can 
write so as to charm a little circle can charm the 
world. To do the thing well, to do it perfectly, that 
must be our aim. We may let the rest take care of 
itself. 



>Y<HEN the perfect thing has been done, there is no 
vjy need of calling attention to it, no danger that 
it will not find recognition. The great souls have 
given their whole thought to doing the perfect thing, 
and have left the world to find out that it was per- 
fect. And the world has never failed. Sometimes it 



26 Perspectives of the Spirit 



is slow, BOmetimee it is cruel. — it will crucify. Bui in 
the long run it responds. The perfect thing cannot 

be hid. 



^=nIIK arrival of the perfect abolishes the imperfect. 
^/That which is complete renders forever obsolete 
what is less than complete. 



a MAX should build his life in such a way that 
the foundation that is laid today shall be ade- 
quate to bear the greatest structure which tomorrow 
may demand. So men built a great church in the 
middle ages. One generation chose a site and a 
ground plan, and built a crypt massive and worthy 
tc endure for centuries. And the next generation 
added a splendid choir. And another, finding the 
work well done, budded a transept after its own 
heart. And another made cloisters and chapter 
houses rich and beautiful. And others labored at 
nave and towers. And today men pronounce it 
worthy to be called a cathedral of God, the pride of 
its city and of the world. 



HAITHPULNESS in little things is not enough. 
It must be coupled with a clear vision for the 
things that are really great. We must be able to see 

the thing of supreme importance and give it in- 
stantly the right of way. 



Work and Play 27 



y^yHE trouble with most of us is not that the things 
v/we are doing are so bad, but that there are so 
much greater and better things we might be doing. 

QO one can live a strong, deep life, and be rush- 
ing this way and that for every little thing. The 
strong man is not the one who is always at the beck 
and call of others. The strong man is he who has 
respect for himself and keeps the right of way clear 
for the main work of his life. 

X WOULD be willing to help a little, to do my 
share," say one and another. But until the man 
comes along who is willing to do very much more 
than that, the thing is not done. Back of every en- 
terprise of consequence is someone who is putting in 
his whole energy, never stopping to ask whether he 
is doing more or less than his share. 

^nHE strong men of history have not been those 
V-/ who have taken forever to make up their minds. 
They have reached conclusions and have stood forth 
as advocates, convincing and persuading others. 
The weak men — and among them have been many of 
the wise and learned — have been victims of the 
academic vice, sitting ever in the midst of open ques- 
tions looking for light. 

I^nHE most fascinating quest in the world is the 
V-/ quest of beautiful deeds. When we are con- 
verted and become as little children, we shall engage 



28 Perspectives of the Spirit 



in it with all the zest of a butterfly-chase, crying, 
"See, there is one! I choose that for mine". We 
shall not wait for some one to come and offer it 
to us. We shall lie in wait and capture one that 
is all our own. The woman with the alabaster box 
of ointment was on the quest of beautiful deeds, 
and she had great success that day. She found one 
of the rarest in all the world and added it to her 
collection. 



XT is the deeds of pure honesty, pure goodness, 
pure love, that are built like precious stones into 
the fabric of our lives. And w T hen all the other 
things, the mixed mass of flimsy makeshifts, have 
been burned away like the woodwork of a building, 
these beautiful deeds w r ill remain our imperishable 
treasure. 



COHERE be some who when they come to the end 
J of life will have to confess with shame that they 
hare hardly done their own w r ork at all. They have 
spent all their time doing other people's work. 



XT is good to w T ork; but when w r ork is divorced 
from joy, divorced from love, divorced from 
hope, divorced from the creative eagerness of the 
heart, then it becomes the curse of drudgery, a dead- 
ening influence upon the soul. Much of the dissipa- 
tion into which men plunge is simply a reckless and 
desperate rebound from the steady grind of drudg- 



Work and Play 29 



ery. We shall not get rid of the effect until the cause 
is removed. In the better day that is coming drudg- 
ery, mother of many sins, will be done away. 



JOME of the greatest work has been done by 
'people who thought they were simply playing. 

Our best work is always done when we are so happy 

in it that we forget it is work at all. 



& 



fVEN the birds build their nests and feed their 
.young, singing the while. And the animals dig 
their burrows in the ground, working as if it were 
play. And yet it has not been said of thera that they 
were made in the image of God. 



COURAGE 



^<IIK lives of men have moral power not in pro- 
V-X portion as they are faultless, but in proportion 
as they arc brave and generous. The people who 
have the least moral influence are often those whose 
behaviour is most irreproachable. 

VEBTUE is not mere correctness. Virtue is cour- 
age, virtue is conflict, virtue is the bravery of 
truth and love, virtue is the victory of life over 
death. 



QATURB does not remember. Nature does not 
compare today with yesterday. Nature lives 
ever in the present, rejoicing in the continual re- 
ptval of her life. Let us learn her secret. To rise 
from one's bed in the morning and go forth to the 
day with all tin 1 freshness of a new creation, — the 
wrack and uncleanness of yesterday gone, and the 
fresh tide of today filling every inlet of one's soul, — 
that is the way of power. 



g MAN'S morning devotions should be his spirit- 
ual gymnastics. Choose for your morning 
thought something that will give tone and vigor, 
poise and power, resistance and resilience for the 
day's work. 



Courage 31 



^PKO awake in the morning saying, "I go forth 
V-/ today to meet Him, to meet my Beloved; per- 
chance I shall see Him !" — that is hope. And even if 
that day we do not see Him, even if everything goes 
wrong and all paths lead nowhither, and at night the 
head presses weary and discouraged upon the pil- 
low,— still is it well to have hoped. And we awake 
refreshed and go forth to hope again. Some days 
the hope comes true. 



yjr^UCH of our praying is worse than useless, be- 
M< cause it is desperate. The prayer that avails is 
the brave, joyous, serenely confident prayer. 



XT is well for us to put it down as a settled con- 
viction, that when we are utterly hopeless we are 
simply sick. It is a wise man who knows enough to 
recognize this at the time, and so to discount his 
misery. Lie down, child; sleep and rest; and when 
sweet hope revives, you will know that you are get- 
ting better. 



OESPAIR is the parent of many sins. The hour 
of despondency is the hour of temptation. Then 
it is that one says : "It matters little what I do ; my 
life is of no account anyway. While I thought I 
could accomplish something, I was careful and felt 
that I could not afford to do this and that ; but now 
that I see I can't win, it doesn't matter much." If 
we would conquer sin, we must find some medicine 



32 Perspectives of the Spirit 



for these moods of despondency. We must rescue 
one another from despair, it* we would rescue one 

anot her from siu. 



gMAX is not in B position to do nnieh with " 
advice so long as his heart is heavy and sad. He 
nerds first a tonic of joy. Tell him some good D 

CfHE man who has simply heard Jesus say, ''Come 
f unto me and I will give you rest," — has he heard 
the strongest note in the Master's call? 



GOME out of your introspection, brooding over 
your needs and troubles, going off in a corner 
and telling over your heads of faith. Come! right 
some of those wrongs, teach some of these ignorant, 
iiirht some of these battles for human liberty. Any 
oi.o could get morbid and unhappy and shed great 
tears, if he sat down and nursed his soul. Up! work 
for others, work for the world. 



OVERCOMING EVIL 



i^fHE sin you are sorrowing over is not likely to 
K*J be the worst thing about you. The worst thing 
about you is probably something on which you pride 
yourself. 



^YOUR problems are not peculiar; they are repre- 
^^ sentative. And the very one you think most 
peculiar is likely to be the most representative. 



(0 long as a man will not admit that he is in the 
wrong, his neighbors are apt to be severe in their 
comments; but as soon as he humbles himself, they 
not only forgive him but begin to take his part. 



QOTHING will bring a man to his senses like 
being made to face without the slightest abate- 
ment the consequences of what he has been doing. 
The vision of the mountain-top is not more salutary 
than the vision in the valley of humiliation. 



[E mind is quick to learn, and the hand is quick 
'to imitate; but character is a slower growth, it 
cannot be hastened. Thought leaps like a flash of 
lightning to the earth's remotest bound; but char- 



34 Perspectives of the Spirit 



acter is like adding eell to cell in the woody fiber of 
the tree-trunk. 



|^<IIK human soul is a very delicate organism. 
^•Friction or stoppage at a single point meanfl dis- 
order throughout the whole. The life energy that 
should go to that point goes elsewhere, and some 
other (dement becomes abnormal and excessive. 
Often the remedy for a sin lies in opening up some 
entirely different side of the nature where the sur- 
plus of vital energy may find an outlet. Every sin 
of commission has behind it some sin of omission. 



>T<ORK is the great redemptive agency. Not task- 
vL/work, not slave's work, but active goodness. 
The fool hath said in his heart, "I will work until I 
can afford to be idle". But wdien the time comes, if 
he keeps his resolution he degenerates. 



OO not let your house stand vacant. Lease it at 
once to some good tenant. Then when the evil 
spirit returns he will not even try to get in. He will 
find the house leased to another and occupied by 
him, — his name on the door, his shades in the win- 
dows, his furniture and rugs in the rooms, his chil- 
dren playing in the yard, the stamp of his possession 
and individuality everywhere, and not even a little 
card in a window saying that there is a room for 
rent. That is the way to keep the evil spirits out. 



Overcoming Evil 35 



HAVING a human soul is like saving a furnace 
fire. We first clear out the ashes, the old dead 
stuff, the accumulations of the past. Then we shake 
it a little, but not too vigorously, else we shall lose 
the little fire we have. Then we put in some kind- 
ling. We give it something easy to do at first, some- 
thing it naturally lays hold of and is glad to get. 
Little deeds of kindness make good kindling, yield- 
ing quick returns, even if they do not last long. Then 
we can shovel on the hard coal, the long-range 
duties, the heavy responsibilities. But one other 
thing we must not forget, and that is to put on the 
draft, a good big draft, — no harm to leave the doors 
wide open at the bottom for a while, and let the 
flames go sweeping up into the flues of the chimney. 
Sometimes the draft itself will save the fire, as when 
a mighty breath of G-od's spirit comes upon the dry 
bones of a man's life. 



/^fVIL is simply the shadow cast by the advancing 
VIA standard of good. They who talk of abolishing 
evil, as if it were some dragon whose head could be 
cut off by the valiant saint, do not realize the import 
of their words. So long as we are advancing, we 
shall always be leaving something behind, and that 
which we leave behind we shall see to be inferior 
and evil. It is not until we are beginning to leave 
it behind that we call it that. From the standpoint 
of today much of what we thought yesterday must 
always seem to be error, and much of what we did 
yesterday must always seem to be sin. 



86 Perspectives of the Spirit 



Y^vl'MAX progress bas consisted in the uncovering 
J—x one by one of the divine laws for the life of man. 
The firsl effecl in each instance is a profound sense 

n. We discover that we have been Living in 
violation of some of the greal laws of life. 



^<IIK lower things in life seem t<> be a great 'leal 
^/stronger than the higher things, because they 
ancienl and well established. The battle for 
righteousness is almost always an attack on things 
that are established and customary. 

y^<IIE facts are mostly on the side of things as they 
V-Xare; for facts are all in the past tense, — facta, 
things that have been done. The future is not a fact. 
It comes by faith. 



CKHERE is a liberty that leads to liberty, and there 
*/ is a liberty that leads to bondage. If a certain 
course will leave me less free tomorrow, will fetter 
the life of my spirit until there shall be less and less 
room and margin in it, — what kind of freedom is 
that ! dive me the liberty thai leads t<> liberty, and 
not the liberty that leads to bondage. 



^T^K must learn to stop injustice in the way that 
vL/desus stopped it. the only way in which it can 
really be slopped. When wrong was done him. it 
went uo farther; it stopped then 1 . He refused to be 



Overcoming Evil 37 



a connecting link in the passing on of wrong. What 
entered into him as evil was vented upon no one else 
through him as evil. It simply ceased ; and from him 
instead went forth kindness and justice. 

>YiHEN the drill strikes a deposit of oil or gas, 
vl/ there is a sudden uprush. The question is what 
to do with all this escaping energy. It is inflam- 
mable, — shall we touch a match to it and let it flare ? 
In its crude state it is foul, — shall we let it flow out 
and pollute the air and the soil and the streams? Or 
is there some way to refine it and purify it, and turn 
it into such channels that it shall give light and 
warmth to thousands of homes ? Of you the parable 
is spoken,— your energy, your passion, your enthusi- 
asm. 



THE LATENT GOOD 



XT is c immoo to say that the roots of evil are very 
<lcr]) within us. But it also needs to be remem- 
bered that the roots of goodness lie very deep. 
"How hard it is." says George Eliot, "to kill the 
deep-down fibrous roots of human love and good- 






!" 



^nIIE worst man in the world manages to keep up 
K*s heart by virtue of some relics of goodness that 
are in him; even as the man whose limbs are para- 
lyzed and who can hardly speak, sustains life by 
virtue of organs that are still intact. 



CKHERE are places in every man's life where 
■/eternal goodness looks out from beneath the 
evil and asks to be given a chance. And these are 
the places at which we must lay hold of the man if 

we would help him. 



{OME WHERE in every man's life is the Christ— 

obscured, denied, betrayed, crucified, alas how 

q! — but always there. No child is born into the 

world without that divine spirit as part of its life 

equipment. One may depend upon it as surely as 

upon the presence of the heart and lungs and other 



The Latent Good 39 



vital organs. The spiritual organism, too, has its 
vital parts, its normal elements. We do not have to 
get them afterwards like clothes and put them on. 



>|CE are apt to speak of heredity as if by its means 
\jLJ all the evils of the past were rolled in upon us. 
If that were so, our lives would be utterly poisoned 
so that no wholesome growth would be possible. But 
even as a river flowing between towns and defiled 
again and again by sewage needs only to flow a few 
miles in the sunlight to become fresh and sweet 
again, so the stream of life flowing between the gen- 
erations seems in some mysterious way to come out 
under the touch of a divine sunlight, and emerges 
in that symbol of freshness and purity, a little babe. 



^tCHAT becomes of a fact, an observation, an ex- 
vl/ perience, when it enters into our mind ? Instantly 
it calls up certain associations. In other words, cer- 
tain previous inhabitants of our mind reach out for 
it, and say, "Here, you belong with us". And so it 
goes along with them and adds itself to them. If the 
evil things within us have got the advantage, so that 
whatever comes in they reach out for and seize, cry- 
ing, "Here is food for us; here is something for us 
to be selfish or jealous or suspicious or complaining 
about," — then indeed we have a problem on our 
hands. If all the runners are from one hotel, very 
few of the arriving passengers will go to any of the 
other houses. So the nobler parts of our nature must 
have their runners at the arrival of every train, seiz- 



40 Perspectives of the Spirit 



ing hold of things by their brighter and better side 
and claiming them for the good. That is how out of 
the same mass of experience one man will increase 
the bitterness and another the sweetness of Ids 
nature; one will find food for the baser and another 
for the nobler things wit bin him. 



XF to be good LS to be unnatural, and if to be 
natural is sin, then the only way to give good- 
ness a chance would be to withdraw from the world 
into a kind of conservatory of virtue. That was the 
way of the monks, and their ruined monasteries are 
monuments to the doctrine of original sin. Hut the 
goodness which the Master came to teach is no such 
hot-house growth. It is a goodness for which the 
body of man was framed as the temple, and the mind 
of man as the instrument, and the natural affections 
of man as the expression. It is not renunciation but 
fulfilment. It is as natural and as satisfying to the 
soul as health is to the body. 



|^<IIE problem of life for each of us is to take the 
V^/ daily grist of experience and transform it into 
character and personality. 



[ELECT the most radiant and altogether wonder- 
ful person of your acquaintance, and consider 
the daily miracle which is enacted in that life. Into 

it is entering a certain daily experience not par- 
ticularly different from that of many others. And yet 



The Latent Good 41 



what a rare and wondrous product emerges! Here 
is this flower of a radiant life blooming every day 
with a beauty and charm and fragrance all its own. 
It is like a plant reaching down into the dark, ill- 
smelling earth, lifting it up, mingling it with the 
air and sunshine and transforming it into a beautiful 
blossom. 



TRENGTH of Materials" is one of the branches 
1 of engineering, and a similar study must be 
made in human life. Instead of assuming that men 
are inherently bad, we shall do well to inquire what 
provocations they have been under, and whether 
the situation has not been such as to subject them 
to a strain which human nature was not calculated 
to bear. 



XT is amazing what new strength and beauty a 
life will sometimes take on, when it is removed 
from the place where it does not belong and put 
where it does belong. Many a person has had the 
name of being bad, and has done things to deserve 
that name, for no other reason than that he is not 
in his place. He is at his worst, and he puts others 
at their worst. 



o 



FTEN the good overcomes the evil just by pre- 
senting itself. The comparison cannot be borne. 



LENDING A HAND 



£"YOU are fighting B battle for your character, for 
^fyour faith. Tell me, what kind of a victory are 
you winning? Shall you barely be able to pull your- 
self through, or will you have strength to lend a 
helping hand to somebody else? Ah, you and I will 
win better victories if we are fighting for nobler 
causes than simply our own preservation. 



^<IIE smallest man in the world is the man who 
V-«/has the smallest sense of responsibility. "Am I 
my brother's keeper?" No, Cain, you are not ; but if 
you were a bigger man, you would be. 



XHAVE sometimes watched a fly struggling to 
free itself from the sticky coating of the fly- 
paper, till it gets wing after wing and leg after leg 
free ; but I have never seen it turn back to help an- 
other fly. Are we no better than the flies? 



^fCHEN once a man has turned the tide in his own 
\U life against some evil thing, he is able to help 
others. Wherever a victory is won, it makes pos- 
sible other victories in other lives. 



Lending a Hand 43 



CHILOSOPHERS have sometimes deplored the 
fact that we ever attained to self-consciousness, 
and have advocated a return to unconsciousness, to 
the oblivion of self, as the only remedy for unhappi- 
ness. It is true that self-consciousness, that is, a 
self-centered consciousness, is the cause of much of 
our unhappiness. But the way of escape is not by 
retreat into unconsciousness, but by advance into 
unselfishness. That is the way of Christ. 



tTBUNDANT life and unselfish life are synonyms. 
SJ. The life that seeks to segregate itself from the 
common contacts of human service is not abundant ; 
it is meager and impoverished. 

QOTHING so ennobles a man, so lifts him above 
what is small and base in his own life, as really 
to give himself for the life of another. 



© 



HE greatest souls are always accessible to the 
humblest. 



>tCE must be on our guard against thinking people 
vly are worse than we simply because they are dif- 
ferent. 



s 



OU cannot save men unless you love them. And 
you cannot love them unless you believe in them. 



44 Perspectives of the Spirit 



j^OBEAT a man as a Leper and he beconiei i leper. 
\*s People that are cut oft from work and fellow- 
ship and trust and hope and love inevitably degen- 
erate. 



XS it possible for growth to take place in an 
atmosphere of suspicion, every eye averted, ami 
the worst construction put Upon every word and act? 
Are we wise in separating a man for years from 
everyone who Loves him or has faith and joy in him, 
and then expecting him to emerge from the prison 
walls a reformed man? 



©HERE is only one kind of missionary work that 
really counts, and that is personal goodness 
coupled with infinite tenderness. 



XF there is any man who wants to talk to me 
about my soul, that is the man I do not want 
to see. The men who have helped me most have 
not been men who talked to me about my soul. They 
have been men who were true and good, and believed 
something, and lived as if they believed it. 



DO man can teach us unless the same spirit be 
working in us and in him. No man can teach 
us except what we are ourselves on the verge of 
vering. 



Lending a Hand 45 



XT is easy to stand for ideals when one is at a 
distance from the facts. The test is to stand 
for ideals when one is face to face with the facts. 
Our problem is to idealize the man with whom we 
have daily. dealings, to invest his need with the sac- 
redness of all human need, his sorrow with the 
majesty of all human sorrow, to look beneath the 
shabbiness and meanness of his exterior semblance 
and become aware of the soul within. 



JTUDY to name people by their virtues and not 
by their faults. When that poor girl came in to 
anoint the Master's feet, the pharisee named her by 
her sin, while Jesus named her by her love for him. 
That made all the difference. 



|^<HEBE is a secret name belonging to every man, 
\±*/ a name that is written in heaven. When some- 
one calls him by that name, he starts. "How did 
you know it?" he asks. "It is the dream of my life 
to be that thing. But you are mistaken ; I am very 
far from that." And then the lover of that man's 
soul, the one who has divined it and recognized it, 
will say, "Yes, you can be that; you shall be that; 
you are that already in my thought of you." Can 
one render a more beautiful service than thus to go 
about calling people by their Christian names? 



FRIENDSHIP 



z^YOT cannot do things for people without forming 
OS?' ties between you and them. And the more vital 
the things you do, the stronger the ties. 



^<IIE life of each of us is more than an individual 
V-Xlife. It quickly interlaces itself with the lives 
of others. The idea that we are most truly ourselves 
when we are alone is an illusion. We are most truly 
ourselves when we are w T ith those whom we love. 



GOUNT no man happy simply because his indi- 
vidual lot seems prosperous and free from care. 
Count no man happy until you know those whom he 
loves and what their troubles are ; for they are his 
own. 



HIFE consists of relationships, and our most vital 
relationships are with the persons whom we love. 
They are our world ; in them we live ; apart from 
them we cease to live. What was life to Dreyfus on 
Devil's Island with a letter only once in three months 
from the one who was his world? What would have 
remained of life if those letters, too, had been cut 
off! And what mattered it that in space lie and she 
were thousands of miles apart? When those letters 



Friendship 47 



came, were they not together? was there not "a 
garden where they met"? Life consists of relation- 
ships, and most of all with the persons who consti- 
tute our world. 



HOVE is the eye of the soul, by which it discerns 
another soul. Love discerns the divine in its 
object, and only to love is it revealed. The vision of 
God, of the divine in the human, is for those whose 
hearts have been purified by love. 

|^<HE necessity is upon every person of having 
v./ someone to love him. Many a man can date the 
very birth of his soul from the day when someone 
began to love him, when the warmth of appreciation 
and affection was let in upon his nature. 



^¥^E are saved by faith, — yet not so much by our 
\lJ faith in God as by God's faith in us. The might- 
iest power that can come into a man's life is the 
belief of another in him, of one who stands above 
him and to whom he looks up. 



I^nHE deeper we go into life the rarer friendship 
V-/ becomes, the more our souls do famish for it, 
and the more it means to us when we find it. The 
reason is that as we go on in life, especially the high 
life of the spirit, our natures become more and more 
individual. It is like a mountain-range : on the lower 



48 Perspectives of the Spirit 



levels it is all one, hut above the peaks separate, and 

each in a solitude all its own pierces the blue. The 
liner and more individual souls have ever felt this 
loneliness. It is oppressive until one awakes some 
day and discovers that it is the presence of God. 

^^nIIK ordinary friendships of life are compromises. 
V-/ We are not quite ourselves in them. We have 
to dress for them, to make some little adjustment of 
our mental eostunie before we open the door for this 
One or that one to enter. We have to explain our- 
selves in them for fear we may be misunderst ood. 

And there is often a lingering feeling that if these 
friends knew us altogether they might find some- 
thing in us to displease and so withdraw from us. 
We are glad even of such partial friendships for the 

refreshment they give. And yet all the time they 
speak of a greater friendship that might be. They 
are not the light, but are come to bear witness of the 
iiarht. 



/""YOU have touched your friend's canvas, his pic- 
^rture of life, — touched it with your brush, deep- 
ened this color or that, the light or the shade. And 
lie has done the same t<> yours. We are doing it all 
the time for one another. 



^T^E know people only in their relationship to us. 
vL/ You think you know your friend, can read him 
like a book; but tomorrow someone may come along 



Friendship 49 



and draw things forth from him of which you have 
never dreamed. We are many-sided figures, and we 
know each other only as two corresponding sides 
come together. 

I^nHE only real conversation is between two alone. 
\mJ Mary gets more of the one thing needful because 
Martha is out in the kitchen preparing the meal. 



I^nHE trouble with many of us is that somehow we 
V*/ are shutting our hearts, covering them close and 
clutching them tight in a proud, anxious, sensitive, 
unnatural reserve. We are afraid of each other. We 
do not quite dare to be our real selves. We wear a 
mask, and the soul shut in its secret chamber cannot 
grow. The secret of life, of growth, of freedom, is 
the open heart. 



ONE of the problems in life for each of us is to 
find the people to whose hearts God has given 
us the key, and who may in turn have the key to our 
heart. Ah, but what if the key has become broken 
or rusted or twisted out of shape? Then it will not 
open the heart for which it was intended. 



BMAN must punctually obey the laws of his own 
genius, or he will never make the friendships 
that were intended to complete his life. The human 
soul is a very finely wrought organism, and one may 



50 Perspectives of the Spirit 



not tamper with its workings without paying tin 1 

penalty. The vague unhappiness that is in so many 

lives is doubtless the s j > i r i 1 1 1 a 1 equivalent of sonic of 
those finer laws that we have broken, some of these 
Connections we were meant to make and have mis 



ONE of the mysteries of spiritual dynamics is the 
way in which two people, both weak, both frail, 
both stumbling, may yet by appealing to the best in 
each other obtain such mutual support that out of 
weakness shall come strength, out of doubt faith, out 
of faltering courage. 



i^sHERE is a mutual idealization between friends 
V^ which works for the uplifting of each character. 
When I look into the face of my friend, I am con- 
fronted by his thought of me. It is better than I am, 
but still it is I and not another. It is an illusion, and 
yet it is a truth, a prophecy. It beckons me toward 
my higher self. 



^<IIINK you it is hard to give? Ah no, it is joy. 
V-/it is life to give, when you have found the one 
to whom you can give your best. 



JOME people are so responsive to others that they 
do not visit a friend without wearing home some 
little fragment of his personality, like a Bower in the 

button-hole. 



Friendship 51 



XT is no mere luxury, it is a necessity for a man's 
best work, that he should have a Bethany to 
which to retreat at eventide when the toil of the day 
is over, — a place where as he enters he can shake off 
from his feet the dust of the world's arena, the anx- 
ieties, the disappointments, the harsh criticisms, — 
where he can lay aside the conventional affectations 
behind which even the sincerest of men instinctively 
shield themselves from the cold stare of the world, — 
a place where he can rest and be himself with full 
certainty that he will be understood and appreciated, 
that love will overlook his faults and not chide him 
for them,— a place where the atmosphere will put 
him at his best and lure his soul out of its hiding- 
place. It is this which every man who has it knows 
to be the finest thing in his life. In the strength of it 
he goes his day's journey, and into the joy of it he 
returns weary at night. There they call him by some 
familiar name, and let him do as he pleases, and 
know how to let him alone and how and when to 
companion him. It matters not how small may be 
the cottage or how shabby the furnishings, it is the 
most sacred thing in all his life, his home, his 
Bethany. 



SINCERITY 



XT takes the highest form of courage to be simple, 
natural, sincere, unaffected. Much of what we 
teach children under the name of behaviour is the art 
of pretence, of dissembling their thoughts and feel- 
ings. That life of artificiality and dissimulation 
which the world enjoins as a social necessity is stead- 
ily disqualifying us to live and breathe in a world 
where transparent truth is the law. 

i^\IIE beginnings of insincerity are traceable to 
^-s fear. Most of the lies we have told have been 
when we were frightened. Sometimes people are 
seared into telling the truth, but more often they are 
seared into lying. And on the other hand, the culti- 
vation of courage is the cultivation of honest v. 



i^KlIE humblest person can be a power if he will 
^■^ but live and speak the truth. He may suffer for 

it, but he will be a power. 

^KlM'TII does not flourish in darkness, behind 
^•^ closed doors. The methods of occultism and 
obscurantism are never the methods by which truth 

is served. Open inquiry, free investigation, frank 

statement, due regard for all the facts in the ease, — 

these compose the at nmsphere in which truth thrives. 



Sincerity 53 



and whatever shrinks from that atmosphere may be 
known beforehand to be imposture. 



l^yHE scientific spirit consists in a sincere respect 
V-^ for facts, and a determination to consider all the 
facts involved before drawing a conclusion. 



>¥<ITH many men, when they swear allegiance to 
\mJ the truth, it is really to their opinions as to what 
truth is that they dedicate themselves. The really 
great man is he who is ready to listen carefully and 
thoughtfully to the argument of the man on the other 
side, searching if there be not some truth in it which 
he ought to recognize. 

|^<HERE is no more flagrant disloyalty to Christ 
V-/than that type of dishonest scholarship which 
seeks to protect a creed by throwing up a cloud of 
dust to obscure the bearing of facts. Wherever that 
is being done today by preachers and leaders in the 
church in their attitude toward questions of science 
and history, the church loses the respect of men who 
love truth. And without them she can do nothing. 



>¥<HATEVER faith in God we have must be an 
vl/ open-eyed faith, a faith that can look the whole 
situation in the face, and drag the darkest fact from 
its hiding-place and hold it up to the light. There 
is no commandment, Thou shalt keep thine eyes shut, 



54 Perspectives of the Spirit 



or thy mind shut. The things that are in this world 
are here for us to look at and to reflect upon. The 
faith that we have we must have in the light of all 
the thinking and all the knowledge of our age. 



>^<I1ERE is not one of us whose life is not cast 
V-*/ in the midst of some of the great battles of 
human progress. We are moving about among the 
combatants and have power to dishearten them or to 
cheer them on. Now and then we have a chance to 
strike a blow ourselves. 



>T^I1EN you go down in battle having stood by 
vly your colors, and been scrupulously loyal to what 
is true and fair and kind, there are many consola- 
tions in that defeat. That is what it is to have 
fought a good fight. But when you have resorted 
to every spiteful word and underhanded trick, ex- 
cusing it by the goodness of the cause or the un- 
scrupulousness of the adversary, — then the hour of 
defeat has few consolations. 



j^nIIE great heroic acts of history have not been 
V^done by consultation. Would Jesus have gone 
to the cross, if he had taken counsel with his friends? 
The man Fresh from his vision gathers only doubts 
and cautions from those who have hat! no vision. 
"] conferred not with flesh and blood, " says Paul. 



Sincerity 55 



j^nHE altar of liberty is one on which we can sae- 
V^/rifice with joy. But the sacrifices we make on 
the altars of pride and appearance bring no real joy. 
Perhaps the reason there are so many sad faces 
among us is that we are making sacrifices on the 
wrong altar. 



>rtHAT a free, simple, open life the Master lived! 
\ls He waited until he was thirty, and was subject 
unto them at Nazareth. Then when he saw that the 
petty ideas of his family threatened to keep him in 
the ruts of tradition, he quietly walked out through 
the door and sought his own. He pointed to that 
group of friends, and said that they to him were 
mother and brethren. He hired himself to no man 
to do his bidding. He studied solely to please the 
God who was mirrored in his own soul. So he lived 
his life and did his work with the absolute liberty 
which is the birthright of every child of God. And 
by so doing he has helped to set us all free. 



FAITH 



i^xIIK fundamental hungers of our nature are not 
V-x without that which shall feed them. Argue 

boldly from the need of your soul to the existence 
of that which shall answer to that need. 



Y f LIVING faith can come only from the experi- 
X- A enee within one's own life of that harmony 
which one seeks to find in the universe. 



SOU cannot explain the grounds of your faith 
without laying bare the secret history of your 
heart. It has sprung from certain interactions of 
feeling between your soul and the great universe of 
life. 



XT is of the very nature of faith that it is the 
rare and precious distillation of human struggle 
and sorrow. It is the dew of the morning, that out 
of the blackness and chill of the night has been dis- 
tilled upon the grass. 



HAITH does not come as a luxury but as a neces- 
sity. When you find yourself in the place where 
you cannot go forward without it, then it will come. 



Faith 57 



^nHAT was an appalling day, was it not, when it 
KmJ came over us that we did not lead a charmed 
life, that things were likely to happen to us just 
as to anyone else, that no exceptions would be made 
in our favor, that we should have to take our place 
in the line along with the rest. It was a beautiful 
faith, the self-centered faith of our spiritual child- 
hood ; but the day we came of age was the day when 
that childhood faith died within us. From its ashes 
something vastly larger and better has arisen. But 
it took a long time for it to rise. The three days 
sometimes seemed very long. 

JOME say: Forget the underlying problems; 
fasten your eyes on the work to be done, and 
go grimly ahead. 

"With thy hands go and do thy duty, 
And thy work shall clear thine eyes/' 
There is truth in that. But a man cannot even ade- 
quately know what his duty is, when the skeleton of 
doubt and misery and despair is in his closet and he 
has simply shut the door and turned the key and 
said, We'll go about our business just the same. It 
takes a man's whole soul to see his duty. It takes a 
man's whole soul to see the vision of his work, and 
to see the vision of truth that for him shall be 
inspiring. 

I^nHE solution of the problem of faith, and of the 
V*/ related problems of joy and courage and effici- 
ency, is to be found in deep, vivid, all-sided life, in 



58 Perspectives of the Spirit 



which action and reflection and sympathy arc 

Mended into one harmonious whole. 



^<IIK method of science is to believe only that for 

V-/ which the proof is complete. The method of 
religion is to put one's trust in the deepmost intui- 
tions of the soul. 



>^<riE electric wiring of our house is in a precarious 
V*/ condition and every now and then a fuse burns 
out and we are left in darkness. The light-energy 
from the central plant is pressing itself in at our 
doors, hut there is some defect in our receiving appa- 
ratus. Is it not so with many lives? The discoveries 
and questionings of science and criticism have been 
too much for them. They have not been able to re- 
ceive the current so as to make it illuminate and 
inspire their lives. The fuse burns out, and they are 
left in darkness or fall back upon artificial substi- 
tutes. But let us not think the light of the universe 
has gone out, simply because we have not been able 
to set our own house in order so as to receive it. 



^<ITAT science is agnostic simply means that sci- 
^-*/ence has no instruments for dealing with funda- 
mental religious questions. The scientist himself 
returns from his investigation of those questions 
feeling that it is entirely possible that there may be 
some great and vital truth which has wholly escaped 



Faith 59 



his measurements, and which even today is hid from 
the wise and learned and revealed unto babes. 

DATURE is merciless. The law by which the rock 
bruises the hand that strikes it is never broken. 
It is not until we come to man that we find the 
miracle of mercy, by which the blow that is struck 
may be dissolved in tenderness, and the hand that 
comes back to us be open and not shut. But is it 
only in man that we find mercy? When we go out 
into the desert, out with Job upon the ramparts of 
the world, have we left mercy behind? Must we go 
back to where the light glows in some farm-house 
window, to find kindness? The stars are shining. 
Perhaps yonder are hearts like ours, and in those 
hearts is mercy. But is this all,— these little finite 
points of mercy? Is it only thus in all the universe 
that this rare quality is distilled? 

^^nHERE is a fellowship between us and Nature. 
V-/Our hearts leap and thrill with the swelling 
buds, the rising sap, the greening grass. But her 
response to us at best is impersonal. She is a cold 
mistress. She goes on without us. She leaves our 
hearts still hungry for something as great and beau- 
tiful and full of life as she, but far more personal 
and tender. 

^\HE dark earth lifts itself and blossoms into a 
V^/rose. The slime of life is purified until it yields 
the rarest human love. Does all this come of itself? 



60 Perspectives of the Spirit 



or dors it come oat of the very heart of One whose 
thoughts arc high above ours as the heavens are 
high above the earth? 



XNEED DO miracle, no special revelation, to assure 
me of divine things, so long as I can look into a 
human soul, as into a lily's cup, and see there some- 
thing so precious and rare and spiritual that it com- 
pels me to adopt a view of the universe which shall 
account for that exquisite product. 



l^xIME was when what is now the eye was only a 
V-*/ bunch of nerves peculiarity sensitive to the light. 
It could see nothing, as we now count seeing. It 
could not prove that it was ever going to see any- 
thing. No one knows how long it took for that 
bunch of nerves to become the eye, with all its deli- 
cate adjustments, — opening to admit to the soul the 
picture of the w T orld, and to be the window through 
which glimpses of the soul itself may sometimes be 
caught. Where the eye was then, there the organ 
of spiritual vision is today. That which it yields as 
yet, even in the most highly developed persons, is so 
dim and elusive that it can sustain itself by no argu- 
ment but only by the intuitions and presentiments 
of faith. Let us give it time. 



y^xIIE higher life of the soul does not require very 
V^much in the way of external evidence to build 
itself upon. There is so great an eagerness within. 



Faith 61 



so intense a feeling of the necessity of something to 
match the higher affinities of our being, that give us 
only a gleam of light, a whisper across the silence, 
and we will stake everything upon it. Challenge it, 
demand how we know, and we can make no answer. 
Yet so powerful are these ideal feelings within us, 
that so long as their basis is not utterly taken away, 
they will go on impelling and directing our lives. 

I^nHE dawn makes itself felt in a thousand ways 
Km/ before the orb of day discloses itself ; and the 
great truths of the spiritual life are felt long before 
they can be proven. 

^<HERE they are, the sublime conceptions of faith, 
^*/like the snow-capped summits of a mountain- 
range, sunlit and glorious, looking as if suspended in 
the sky. We can see those radiant summits, though 
almost doubting if they be not a mirage ; and we can 
see the solid ground beneath our feet, and that it is 
sloping upward ; but all between is shrouded in mist 
and gloom. And it is often only by a supreme act of 
resolution that we can bring ourselves to believe 
that within the mist and gloom is solid ground all 
the way up, and solid rock upon those shining sum- 
mits painted on the sky. Yet when with weary feet 
we have climbed, we shall find it even so. 

^¥<E are simply getting glimpses of things as we 
vl/ journey along. Any one of them is certain to 
be partial and fragmentary, and very likely to be 



62 Perspectives of the Spirit 



misleading. The utmost we can expect of even our 
Largest thought is that it will somehow symbolize 

and represent to us the truth of God, This being BO, 

we may properly resolve to seek and cherish such 
views of things as <\rr inspiring, believing that these 
leasl unworthily represent what the effect of total 

truth would be upon a mind great enough to re- 
ceive it. 



GOD 



I^nHAT which one age speaks of in terms of per- 
V^sonality another age may speak of in terms of 
force, of principle, of ideal. But the reality in both 
instances is the same. 



eOD is more than Sovereign and Judge, more than 
Taskmaster, more than Pate, more even than 
Father. He is supremely the Teacher, seeking above 
all to bring out in each one of us the pattern of 
beauty that was specially made for him. 



eOD is ever the Person of the largest circle of life 
and interest. And what is revelation but God 
disturbing us and compelling us to go outside our 
little circle and live in a larger one? After it has 
been done we thank Him for it; but while it is in 
process we rebel. 



j^nHE same God who is the author of the highest 
V-^ states of the soul is also the author of the ma- 
terial world. The chemist, the electrician, the bio- 
logist, no less truly than the prophet, the psalmist, 
the spiritual teacher, are working with materials 
that have been ordered and given by God. 



64 Perspectives of the Spirit 



HBT qo man speak lightly or contemptuously of 
the material basis of OUT life. Le1 us not despise 

this vude stem that comes up oul of the earth, for 
upon it shall be borne tin* blossom of beauty and 
the fair Frail of immortality. 



DO Longer do we think of God as being deeply 
offended with the human race. We are all in the 

kindergarten stage with our follies and foibles; and 
the great Teacher does not take us too seriously 
when we double up our puny fists and blaspheme 
against Him, or when we break forth in anger at our 
fellows. 



ir^lIAT do we mean by the will of God? It is a 
vly great upward-moving tide, flowing through the, 
ages, flowing through the hearts of men. Far back 
in the past we can see the traces of its working, — 
the old ripple-marks on the shore, where the waves 
were pushing a little higher, a little higher. The tide 
has risen far since then ; the old ripple-marks are 
quite submerged. And it is rising still. 

^<IIE world is not yet even an organism. It is in 
V-y process of being organized. It is chaos on the 
way toward order. All that we can say is that or- 
ganizing centers are appearing here and there, oases 
in the desert. The first chapter of Genesis might be 
rewritten today in the present tense. The Spirit of 
God is brooding over the face of the great deep. God 



God 65 



has said, Let there be light ; and the light is coming. 
God has said, Let there be order; and order is com- 
ing. God has said, Let there be man in our image, 
after our likeness ; and man is coming into His image 
and into His likeness. All this is taking place today. 
We are in the midst of the creation. 



^^nHE rougher masonry and carpentry of the world 
V*/ has been accomplished, and now the divine Art- 
ist is engaged upon His finest and most delicate cre- 
ations. He is molding the life-stuff into a thousand 
shapes of personality. He may not let this work out 
to artisans. He must do it with His own fingers, and 
breathe upon it with the breath of His spirit. He 
must hold it in the furnace, and plunge it into the 
flood, and expose it to the blast, and hold it up in 
the sunlight. 



i^yHE man who without faith in God is devoting 
V-/his life to bring to pass a heaven upon earth, is 
himself one of the best evidences of that very God 
whom he doubts. 



KERE stands some little atheistic man in the pres- 
ence of the San Francisco earthquake, and says : 
" There is no pity in God. See His rocks, how merci- 
less they are ! They crush a man as quickly as an 
ant. There is no pity in God; but there is pity in 
my heart and in the heart of others like me." 
little atheistic man, who are you and what is your 



ti6 Perspectives of the Spirit 



heart, bu1 a part of the great universe of God I What 

right have you to take the love that is in the heart of 
man and subtract it from the universe, and judge 
God by what is left! How Foolish to say there is no 
goodness or justice in God, beeause the movements 
of the rocks do not show intelligence enough to avoid 
shaking great cities. Upon each plane of existence 
we find the manifestations of God which are appro- 
priate to that plane. There is a sense in which God 
is in the earthquake. It is a part of one of His 
great processes on the material plane of existence. 
There are higher aspects of God which we find in 
the world of living things. There are higher aspects 
still which we find in the soul of man. In the move- 
ments of the rocks we find gravitation and heat, but 
we shall not find intelligence and justice there, any 
more than we find spirituality in plants and creep- 
ing things. These qualities are to be found only on 
those higher levels where the tree of life has blos- 
somed in the souls of men and borne its perfect fruit 
in the gentle ministrations of love. 

-Of ROM Colorado Springs, ten miles away, Pike's 
JL\ Peak is a glorious vision of a mountain. But 
when we get to Manitou, at its very base, we cannot 
see it at all. We say, "Where is it? We have lost 
it." But no, we are nearer than ever before, folded 
between the knees of the giant. Is it not often so 
with the soul's approach to God? In the ages of 
faith men saw God from afar, glorious and beauti- 
ful, outlined against the sky. Prayer and sacrifice 
and thanksgiving and praise were natural expres- 



God 67 

sions of the soul in the presence of that vision. And 
if those things do not seem so natural and spontan- 
eous today, if clouds and darkness are round about 
the face of the Most High, may it not mean that we 
are at Manitou clasped in the great rock ridges of 
righteousness and judgment which are the eternal 
foundations of His throne? Some day the clouds 
will clear away from views of God that are now 
obscured ; and then we shall find that we are nearer 
the summit of the mountain because we left the dis- 
tant point from which the splendid view was gained, 
because we went in among the foot-hills and lost the 
beautiful vision and climbed footsore and weary 
upon the great foundations. 



OUR personality is not a closed circuit. It dips 
deep into God. It is rooted in Him, as the tree 
is rooted in the soil. That which comes up from 
within is none the less from Him than that which 
comes down from above. 



XSAW one radiating goodness and sunshine and 
the grace of authority, and I said, How do you 
do it? The answer was, "It is not I; it is the God 
within. My part is simply to keep the glass clear. 
But too often it gets covered with the frosts of un- 
kindness or the grime of earth or the mists of fear. 
And then the light does not shine through." 



68 Perspectives of the Spirit 



nAVK you not Bometimefl felt at the close of a 
busy day that your intense surface activity pre- 
vented the deeper relations of the soul from asserting 
themselves? Call it God, call it what you will, some- 
thing there is which when we open our hearts in 
Bilence, in meditation, in prayer, comes into us and 
enriches the soul. I raise in all seriousness the ques- 
tion whether in our lives of busy usefulness, rushing 
hither and thither, we may not unwittingly be clos- 
ing our souls to those deeper influences which are 
really the sources of the spiritual life. 



(HALL we liken the human soul to a pool in the 
woods, left by the rain, reflecting the trees and 
the sky, but already drying up around the edges 
and soon to disappear? Or shall we liken it to the 
crystalline pool of a Yellowstone geyser, opening into 
something deeper which no man has ever explored, 
fed from beneath, moved and controlled from be- 
neath, connecting with some great reservoir close by 
the beating heart of the world? What are our ideal- 
isms, our intuitions, our inspirations, our spiritual 
awakenings, but the effects produced upon the sur- 
face by events in the deeper unconscious portion of 
our being? What are kindred souls but they who 
open into the same reservoir of life? Separate on 
the surface, they are united in the depths. 



I^nIIERE is a stream in the Yellowstone Park, 
V-/ which flows through the plain where the geysers 
are. It has its rise like other streams from the sur- 



God 69 



face springs in the woods. But that is not the 
whole story of its life. As it flows through the geyser 
plain, it receives into itself the water from those 
mighty geysers pouring out of the very heart of the 
earth. And by virtue of these subterranean waters 
it becomes profoundly changed. Is not that stream 
a parable of our human lives, flowing no doubt a 
continuous current out of the forests and jungles of 
the past— yet who can say that the bed of the stream 
itself is not full of openings that go deep into the 
heart of God? 



RELIGION 



|^<IIK deepest thing within any man is his religion. 

V-x It is his secret. He will not reveal it to one who 
does not understand. lie will be silent, at tin 1 risk of 
being thought to have no religion at all. And yet 
there is no point in his whole being where he so longs 
for companionship. 

OO not insist upon understanding your neighbor's 
religion. You will not be able, unless you and he 
are rarely alike. Above all, do not strain yourself to 
imitate it. Say in your heart, "I am resolved to 
have only such religion as is real to me, because that 
alone is mine." 

Y~yrcLIGION like love must be a free and spontan- 
J3C eous birth within the soul, a discovery which 

each man makes for himself. The most beautiful and 
inspiring thought in the world may be positively re- 
pulsive when it is thrust upon us as a dogma or 
exacted of us as a creed, just as the great master- 
pieces of literature become irksome to children when 
eut up into task-work for them. 

Y^KIdGION is the result of the pressure of tin 1 
>5C divine will upon the human. It is the compul- 
sion of God making itself felt in a man's life. 



Religion 71 



<£VELIGION is a man's adjustment to the ulti- 
j3ji mate realities. You cannot mix and combine 
the different religions and make an ideal religion, 
any more than you can mix different men and make 
an ideal man. Your composite religion will simply 
be nobody 's religion until you have a composite man 
to match it. 



H MAN'S religion must not be a lowly camp-fire 
kindled in some safe and sheltered depression in 
his nature. It must be a lofty beacon-light flaming 
from the high place. A man's religion must be the 
commanding thing in his life. Indeed, whatever is 
the commanding thing in his life is his religion, 
whether it be called by that name or not. 



IAT which comes to us as a suppliant, asking to 
1 be patronized, begging a little corner of our life, 
a little fraction of our income, cannot be religion. 
When religion comes to us, it will come as a king. It 
will claim our all. It will speak with absolute 
authority. 



XT cannot be said too often that the greatest 
truths and the grandest realities need no defense 
and protection. Jesus Christ does not need your 
defense of His divinity. The Bible does not need 
your argument for its inspiration. 



72 Perspectives of the Spirit 



XT takes ages to produce a Bible; and it is a part 
of the value of our Bible that the ages have been 
at work upon it. The very fact that in its hoar 
antiquity the sense of individual authorship has been 
largely lost adds dignity and authority. Its back- 
ground is not individual but racial. It comes to us 
as the work, not of men, but of Man. 



|^<IIE truth is growing upon us that the universe 
V*/ is too big and too vital to be reduced to any 
formula that our minds are capable of evolving. 
When a man sends us a Bible-chart of the world, 
explaining all the dispensations, we promptly put 
it in the waste-basket. Its very completeness con- 
demns it. We beg of the creedmakers that they leave 
something to the imagination. And when in our 
own thinking something appears that purports to be 
a complete formula of everything, if we are wise 
we shall simply receive it and place it on file. 



^xIIERE are some truths which are all the more 
V^/ inspiring to us, because we have to stand on tip- 
toe to catch even a glimpse of them. We know that, 
in the very nature of the case, if they are what we 
hope, they must be beyond anything which in our 
present stage of development we could by any possi- 
bility comprehend. If we could fully understand 
God, lie would not be God. If we could open a win- 
dow at any moment and look into heaven, it would 
not be the heaven of which we dream. 



Religion 73 



^HE trouble with our creeds is that they have 
\m/ undertaken the impossible, to state the great 
realities of religion in scientific formulae. The 
creeds that are to live must be written in poetry, in 
that symbolic language which is not intended to be 
subjected to exact definition or analysis. In that 
spirit we repeat the Apostles' Creed, we sing the 
Doxology, we chant the Psalms, we partake of the 
Communion, we join in the great historic rituals. 
And soon we begin to love them all, to love every 
altar and shrine which the human spirit has builded, 
whether it be made of stones or whether it be made 
of words. We love them all, because in and through 
them all breathes the one great prayer, " Nearer, my 
God, to Thee". 

JOME lives are like the steamship, propelled by 
the energy stored up in the coal beds. These are 
they that derive their strength from their faith in 
the past, the old doctrines, the old institutions, the 
ancient events. "No doubt (say they) the sun is 
shining today; but we have not yet found how to 
make ships go by current sunshine; we have to 
resort to the dusky lumps in which is the concen- 
trated sunshine of the past. It takes the old doc- 
trines to build churches and put strength into human 
lives." And there is a deal of truth in that. Those 
old creeds once came over men with a flash of power 
from on high. And there is power in them yet for 
many men who would be wholly at a loss for strength 
if left to any inspirations they could find in the 
present. 



74 Perspectives of the Spirit 



^^IIH Parable of the Talents is the charter of re- 

v^ligious progress. The painstaking traditionalist, 
stickling for the faith once delivered and striving 
to hand it down unchanged in creeds and confessions, 
is apt to believe himself the faithful servant well 
pleasing to the Lord. In reality, his is the part of the 
man who wrapped the talent in a napkin. 

I^<IIE glory of Christianity has been that in pre- 
^/ vailing over the religions of other races it has 
been able also to absorb into itself the contributions 
these races were making to the higher life of the 
world. It is a part of the greatness of our religion 
thai it does not count itself a finality, but is always 
a living, growing thing. As such it must go to for- 
eign nations, not to destroy or combat their sacred 
ideals, but to fulfil and perfect them, and itself also 
to be fulfilled and perfected by them. 

^<IIE Church is to be renewed not by reducing her 
KmJ beliefs to the minimum, but by refilling her 
empty creeds w T ith helpful and inspiring truths. 

^<HEEE is no crisis in the life of the Church today 
\^y which is not first a crisis in the lives of the indi- 
viduals who compose it. 

^nIIERE are things more desirable than Christian 
V-/ unity. The Church, which is Christ's body, can 
well afford to be rent asunder in every generation, 



Religion 75 



if only it be broken in the service of truth and right, 
in the unending battle with falsehood and wrong. 

iyCEJEN a child is losing its milk teeth, there is no 
\U occasion for worrying lest he may lose too much. 
Nature takes care of that. And that is the kind of 
confidence we need in reference to the changes that 
are going on in religion today. 

fOME religious beliefs are today in the position of 
_Jthe stage-coach, — obsolete except in the back- 
country. Others are like the air-ship, — clearly in 
sight but not yet fully mastered. 

©EFORE we can have an evangelism that will 
reach intelligent men, we must have an evangel 
composed of ideas which men of intelligence accept. 
We have long had an effective evangel for people 
who in mind are children ; but the evangel that shall 
reach and move people who in mind are full-grown 
men, is even now in the making. 



I^JODAY as we study the old revivals we see that 
\*S the men who sat silent and unresponsive when all 
the rest were swayed by the appeals of the preacher, 
instead of being the most hardened sinners, were 
sometimes among the strongest and most character- 
ful. They were men whose wills were not to be 
stampeded, and who dared to affirm by their cour- 



76 Perspectives of the Spirit 



ageOUfl silence that their souls were their own. I 
can Bee some rude evangelist of the synagogue trying 
to force the lips of the young Jesus during those 
eighteen silent years, and going away baffled, con- 
cluding there was nothing there. The soul knoweth 
the times of its silence and the time of its speech. 

^<IIE old theologians measured the peril of the 

V-Xsoul in terms of suffering, and so they exhausted 
the imagination in picturing a hell that should he 
commensurate with human wickedness. But pain 
after all is only of the surface. The great griefs lie 
too deep for tears; the great penalties lie too deep 
for pain. The real tragedies of life are not in terms 
of suffering but of death. 

^<HE questions that mark the firing line of pro- 
vl/ gress are always divisive questions. It is only 
upon such questions that it costs anything for a man 
to declare himself, and it is only in regard to them 
that his attitude has significance. Too many Chris- 
tian soldiers are following along the trail of some 
great campaign, spending their strength in clubbing 
things that are already dead or dying, and raising 
standards of victory in the form of unanimous reso- 
lutions about things which ten years before it would 
have taken some courage to discuss. 

^nIIE world is athrill with a great expectation. 
vl/ Sweeping amendments are pending not only to 
by-laws but to constitutions. Some things that have 



Religion 77 



always been called right are going to be called 
wrong, and some things that have always been called 
wrong are not unlikely to be called right. Wide- 
spread is the feeling that things are not arranged 
rightly in this world, and that vastly more lives 
than is necessary are being thwarted by the condi- 
tions in which they are lived. We are entering upon 
an age of experiments ; and experiments mean many 
failures, always in the presence of a chorus of elders 
quoting the wisdom of the past. But all these ex- 
periments, some of them grotesque in the extreme, 
are but signs of that mighty movement toward a 
fuller and better life which is beating at the heart 
of the world today. 



JESUS 

j^nIIK four gospels arc the precious relics of the 
V./ life of a most extraordinary Person. They are 
mutilated and fragmentary, confused and mingled 
with the notions of the disciples and of the early 
church. But they are all we have. He who is look- 
ing for rules to lay down as authority for himself 
or another will not find much to satisfy him there. 
Xor will the legal mind, demanding original docu- 
ments and verbal exactness. But he who is looking 
for spiritual suggestions, for bread of life, for some 
accent of the Holy Ghost, will not fail to find it in 
these memorials of Jesus. 

XX examining the walls of an English cathedral, 
the student of architecture will point out to you 
here and there some rude arch or lintel as the work 
of the earliest builders, the Normans it may he or 
the Saxons. So in the mass of material that has 
come down to us in the gospels, the practised eye of 
the scholar will discern here and there a sentence or 
a parable that is an unmistakable part of the most 
ancient tradition and that cannot possibly have been 
added by the will of man. And as we reverently 
take these ancient fragments and piece them to- 
gether, we can reconstruct, not indeed the biography 
of the Master — no one will ever he able to write that 
with any fulness, — but a kind of portrait of him 
which the more we dwell upon it inspires our rever- 



Jesus 79 



ence and affection. It is very simple and unassum- 
ing, very human in all the lovable traits of human- 
ity, with a deep abhorrence of all that is not genuine 
and true, with a deep sense of the beauty and worth 
and high destiny of human life, with a deep sense 
of the infinite love of God for all His children and 
of the indignation of God at those who wrong and 
oppress their fellows, — above all with a deep sense 
of a great and beautiful will of God which was to be 
wrought out in this world and to which he himself 
was utterly and completely devoted. 

DO, he did not travel; no, he did not bend over 
parchments; no, the sages of the world did not 
come to give him instruction. And yet into the soul 
of that Galilean peasant entered qualities distilled 
from the wisdom of all the climes. Mary, what 
mysteries were hid within thy womb! What 
shadowy forms of wise men from the past of Israel 
and of all the world opened there their treasures 
and presented their gifts! 

^f'ESUS spoke with authority; but it was not so 
V-J'mueh the authority of one appointed to a posi- 
tion of command. It was rather the authority of one 
who possesses first-hand knowledge of the realities 
with which he is dealing. It was the authority of 
the truth. 

^<HE great Teacher, with that marvelous lens of 
V^/the pure heart which God had given him, saw 
clearly those great and simple truths which we at 



80 Perspectives of the Spirit 



best feel but dimly, — the divine love and the divine 

way of life. And as we take our stand by his ride 
and look when- he is looking, OUT own hearts do 
bun within us, our own vision becomes clarified, and 
at times the mists do semi to roll awav. 



^~|T5SUS was no blind and literal fulfiller of 
vA prophecy. His genius was in selecting which of 
the prophetic utterances he would fulfil. Some of 
them he ignored, Others he postponed, while a few 
which rang true to his own heart he made the 
maxims of his ministry. 



XF we cannot always recognize a great idea or a 
great cause, some of us can at least tell a great 
man when we see him. And if we art 1 wise we shall 
do just what Peter and Andrew r did, cast in our lot 
with him, because we know that along the path 
where he is going there will be things to be seen and 
things to be done. 



^<IIE doctrine of the divinity of Christ is simply 
V-/the doctrine of God's infinite love made definite 
and concrete. The central article in the creed of 
Christendom is, "We worship the spirit of JesUfl 
enthroned above the universe. We believe that the 
glory of the infinite God is the same glory that the 
world has seen in the fact' of Jesus Christ." 



Jesus 81 



^"YESUS is the greatest soul in history because he 
^LJ* is the most inclusive. It is not so much by his 
purity and zeal that he stands to us as the flower of 
humanity, but by reason of his largeness of spirit, his 
greatness of fellowship. Broad-based upon this de- 
mocracy of fellowship rises the pyramid of an indi- 
viduality so perfect that with one consent we pro- 
nounce it divine. 



jFrtHEN the artist would paint John the Baptist, he 
vL' depicts a man addressing a crowd. When he 
would paint Jesus, he shows us a man talking with a 
single person, and a great multitude crowding about 
to hear. 



^"f'ESUS was no opportunist shrewdly forecasting 
V^the movements of the popular mind. He gave 
little heed to the spirit of the age, which is only an- 
other name for the current fashion of thought. Alone 
in the mountains he studied the spirit of God, and he 
came down in the morning with shining face to 
speak and live in accord with the eternal truth of 
things. 



I^nHE voice of Jesus does not say, Wait for the 
VJ-/ time to be ripe, for the world to be ready. The 
world is never ready. The voice of Jesus says, 
Stand out forthwith and speak your word, strike 
your blow, and pay the cost without murmuring, 
even as I bore my cross. 



82 Perspectives of the Spirit 



l^vHREE things the .Master saw targe, — the heav- 

V-xenly Father and the soul's communion with 
him,— men, women and children, their wrongs and 
virtues, sincerity, humility, justice, charity. By our 

needs and upward striving, — and a certain group of 

virtues, sincerity, humility, justice, charity. By OUT 
estimate of these things we can test our* fellowship 

with Jesus. 



i^\0 follow Jesus is to obey the divine spirit in 
V/our souls as he obeyed that spirit in his soul. 
In such following of Jesus there is room for all the 
diversity of genius and temperament and occupation 
which life itself affords. 



I^nIIE Master does the very thing by us which he 
V-X asks us to do by the universe, — namely, to in- 
terpret it by the good that is in it and not by the 
evil, to believe that the good and not the evil is the 
key to its meaning. That is the path which leads to 
faith. Looking out upon the world, the Christian 
says: "I see a mixture; I see evil; nevertheless I 
am resolved to have faith in good, to have faith in 
God." Looking into the heart of man. Christ says: 
"I see a mixture; I see much evil; nevertheless I am 
resolved to believe in the good." So he blesses us 
and does not curse. He names us by the good in us 
and not the evil. And by that faith he becomes our 
Saviour. 



Jesus 83 



XT is the glory of the Syrophoenician woman that 
she refused to believe even the words of Jesus 
when they seemed to set a limit to the love and good- 
ness of Grod. And Jesus smiled upon her and said 
she was right. 



^"YUDAS present at the Lord's supper? Yes, the 
V/* Master would not exclude even him. He never 
said of any man, "I will refuse to break bread with 
him because he is my enemy." 

>¥^E say that the enemies of Jesus put him to death. 
vl/But the enemies of Jesus would never have 
dared to put him to death, if the men he had helped 
and delivered had stood by him. Think what those 
lepers might have been to Jesus, if they had all come 
back and stood by him. He had troubles of his own 
when he healed those men. He was going up to 
Jerusalem to be crucified. It did not occur to them 
to ask if there might be something that ten men 
could do for him, ten men that had been lepers. 



*T~~~|'OSEPH of Arimathea is the type of the belated 
V^ disciple in every age. The leaders in the clique 
that planned the overthrow of the Nazarene knew 
there would be no serious opposition from Joseph. 
There never is. The man who has been studying to 
keep on the safe side, evading the issue, happening 
to be absent when decisive votes are taken, is not the 
man to do much fighting when the issue is finally 



84 Perspectives of the Spirit 



joined. The logic of events is then too strong for 

him. Perhaps he turned on his pillow that Good 
Friday morning and said to himself: "What use in 
my going down to that meeting! It is all eut and 

dried. Of what avail to vote in a minority of one?" 
Bui who can say what a difference it would have 
made if in Pilate's judgment hall a voice had spoken 

out. saying, "Governor, I wish it understood that 

\<>ir was not unanimous, and that -Joseph of 

Arimathea enters his protest! 91 But no such voice 

was heard. 



gS the life of the world becomes more highly 
organized, the kind of life that Jesus taught is 
becoming more and more the indispensable condi- 
tion of social existence. The very sense of safety in 
which we go about the streets is due to our confi- 
dence that the spirit of good-will prevails in the 
hearts of people. And the points at which we feel 
the need of being on our guard against our fellows 
are precisely {he places in life where the spirit of 
Christ has not yet gained control. 

>^n1IK!iK are places in the Alps where one finds 
V-/ traces of the old roads that were built for the 
Romas legions. Straight across the fields and up 
the ravines and over the mountain-pa- a the 

ancient roadway paved with its little round cobbles. 
Our modern roads wind this way and that, finding 
er and more comfortable grades. Now and then 
they cross or for a little way follow the old Roman 



Jesus 85 



road. In that moment our feet are planted in the 
ancient way, and there is a thrill at the thought 
that we are on the very stones that resounded with 
the tramp of the imperial legions. So our winding 
pathways in life, conforming too much to the easier 
grades of this w^orld, cross sometimes or follow for 
a little the path of the Christ. For a moment our 
feet are standing where his stood; for a day we walk 
in his path. Then we are pulled aside by the calcu- 
lating prudences of this world. The thrill, the sense 
that we are in the path, is gone. We do not know 
where we are now. We are lost again, save as now 
and then in the distance we catch glimpses of the 
shining way of the Christ. 



THE NATIVITY 



/^THRISTMAS is supremely the festival of the boy 

VJs. in every man, the girl in every woman. Alas 
for the man who is grown up! He is of all men most 
unfortunate. There is something wrong about him, 
something hopelessly lacking in him. He may have 
many excellent qualities, hut somewhere he went 
wrong. He took the wrong track, and it led him 
into a cul-de-sac; and there he is, stalled, hopelessly 
and irretrievably adult. And the root of all the 
trouble is that he has lost out of his life that most 
precious thing, the spirit of a child. 

>T^E do not need to search for witnesses of this 
vjy morning's sunrise who can tell us the Form of 
its clouds and the names of its changing hues. The 
sun is here in all its glory and in the light of it we 
have the vision of the world. And even so, we do 
not need to know just what songs they were that 
the angels sang, or just what were the secrets of 
Mary's breast; for the Sun of Righteousness is risen 
with healing in his wings, and the holy Church 
throughout the world is singing her Christmas hymn. 

^^vHAT which the Scriptures tell us of the birth of 
%• Jesus is true also of every child that is born into 

the world as the fruit of the union of love. Do DOl 
angel presences bend over the expectant mother? 



The Nativity 87 



Is not the father visited by dreams of the son whom 
he has begotten ? Do not the angels sing their songs 
over the cradle where is sleeping one who may be 
the deliverer of his people and the voice of God to 
his fellows? Do not the hearts of aged Simeons and 
Annas go out to the little visitor with prophetic ten- 
derness? And do not wise men bring in due season 
their choicest gifts, better than gold, frankincense 
and myrrh, to lay at his feet? 

i^yHE whole world lays its gifts at the feet of child- 
V-/ hood. It is an instinctive and profoundly sym- 
bolic action. Childhood must receive. It comes into 
the world empty-handed, hungry, reaching out for 
things. And not only must youth receive ; age must 
give. It must soon relinquish all. 



/^fVERY man's life is, first, the preparation of a 
VZa gift, and then the quest of the one at whose feet 
the gift is to be laid. Like the wise men, we follow 
the star. And first it pauses over a woman's brow; 
then over a cradle. Then its rays rest upon a great 
multitude, and the soul with its treasure stands in 
the presence of the world and its need. Yet even 
here the heart is not satisfied. Its best and rarest 
treasures are still unopened, unappreciated. We 
have known in part, we have loved in part. And 
the star moves on to that which is perfect. It stands 
over some heavenly Bethlehem of the unseen future, 
where at last we shall lay the gift of our life at the 
feet of the One for whom it was intended. 



88 Perspectives of the Spirit 



^""I'OSEPB is a neglected hero of the Nativity, pa- 
V^ticnt, faithful Joseph,— refusing the counsel of 
this world which would bid him "put her away 

privily" and thai other counsel of this world which 

would bid him "make her a public example", — 
brave, Loyal Joseph, taking his Mary to Bethlehem 
and sheltering thai which was born of her with his 
own good name. There is a sermon to be preached 

from this story of -Joseph and Mary, a sermon that 
Will demand holier standards of honor in the acknow- 
ledgment of parenthood and the welcoming of little 
children into the world. 



>T<H have known more about the planets than we 

vjyhave about the children. We have at least been 
willing to let the planets alone and study the laws 
of their motions respectfully. Instead of blaming 
the sun for having eclipses, we Immortalize the 
astronomer who discovered their laws. Instead of 
finding fault because the orbits of the planets are 
eccentric, we honor the Kepler who computed the 
laws of their elliptical motion. But because children 
were little, we have laid hands on them when they 
had eclipses, and punished them when their orbits 
were eccentric. Today we are repenting in dust and 
ashes, and are studying the children that we may 
know of them, as of the lilies, how they grow. 



DEATH AND DESTINY 



^JMONG the animals and the less developed types 
5JI of humanity death is accepted stolidly as a mat- 
ter of course. The depth of the tragedy is not felt, 
because the awakening of the soul has not yet come. 
But in proportion as men become more keenly con- 
scious of their individuality and of the meaning and 
value of personality in others, the shadow cast by 
the fact of death becomes darker and darker, until 
we have no language with which we can speak of it. 

^<HE awful thing about the idea that death may 
V-/ involve the dissolution of the spirit, is not that 
it denies us the privilege of existing a little longer. 
One might go to sleep content, perhaps, so far as 
that is concerned. The awful thing is that it would 
be God saying No to that sense of eternal value with 
which we instinctively invest the soul and all the 
loves and devotions that are wrapped up with it. 

DOW when Jesus heard it, he withdrew from 
thence in a boat to a desert place apart." 
Alone in that boat on the lake Jesus laid the cold 
fact of John's murder up against his soul. He meas- 
ured the fact of death, even in this most outrageous 
form, up against himself and found himself larger 
than it. There was more of him than there was of it. 
He was able to surround it, comprehend it, take it 



90 Perspectives of the Spirit 



up into himself and go forward. . . . Then, 
when this had conic to pass. — I think it was night 
now and the stars wore out, — he sat up in the boat 
and took the oars and rowed to the nearest shore, 
and lay down beneath 8 tree and slept. And in the 
morning his disciples found him. And the people 
came seeking him. And all day long he taught them 
many things, and stretched out his hand to heal their 
sick, and broke the bread for their hunger, telling 
them of the bread of life of which if a man eat he 
shall be victor over death. 



m 



[Y faith in the future life is built not so much 
upon any miracle of the past, as upon the living 
miracle of the spiritual nature of man, unfulfilled, 
unsatisfied, reaching out for knowledge, for power, 
for love, for expression, and finding in this world 
no place where it may lay its head. 



jr JTjTj honor to the men who have resolved to live 
3— I nobly even though they have little faith in the 
prospects of the soul beyond this life. But such 
stoicism cannot be the permanent attitude of the 
thinking world. At its best it is like the momentum 
of the cable-train, which serves to carry it over the 
space from where one cable ends to where the grip- 
man can lay hold of the next cable. The task set 
for the present generation is to get its grip on a new 
cable of faith in the future life. 



Death and Destiny 91 



DO man can get very far in the work of high and 
serious character-building within his own soul, 
without discovering in himself a certain peculiar evi- 
dence for the future life. He feels like a half-built 
cathedral full of unfinished arches and with the plan 
of the whole dimly disclosing itself. He can form 
no intelligible theory of the universe which shall not 
provide for the completion of that structure. 

>t^HATBVER makes the human soul greater and 
\ks more valuable, whatever lifts it up into the light 
as a rich and splendid thing, makes mightily for the 
belief in immortality. No cheap and common pro- 
duct is to be endued with immortality. It is not the 
factory product that men preserve, but the work of 
art, the hand-tooled binding, the original manu- 
script. These are the things men prize, because they 
cannot be reproduced and nothing can take the place 
of them. And if our lives are to be endued with 
immortality, it w T ill be for a similar reason. It will 
be because there is something in each of them so rare, 
so precious, so peculiar in its promise in the eyes of 
the Most High, that the substance which composes it 
can never again be cast into the melting-pot. 

^=\HE problem of resurrection is one that confronts 
%*/ a man long before his body is put in the grave. 
To go down the slope of time with face glowing, with 
faith in the great ideals undimmed, with mind and 
heart open, ever saying with the Apostle, "I count 
not myself to have apprehended but I press on", — 
that is resurrection. 



92 Perspectives of the Spirit 



XF I stake my Christian Faith upon one thing 
more than another, it is upon the power of the 

human soul to grow and advance in spiritual Stature 
On through this life and out into the unseen. I do 

not wonder that a man falters in his faith when he 
finds himself halted, palsied, ossified in his life. How 

can there be anything but stagnation of faith when 

there is stagnation of life? If the 'shades of the 
prison-house' do of necessity (dose about US, SO that 
in a few years we are to be stalled and can go no 
farther, then I for one give up my faith. But the 
Christian is a man who has undertaken in his own 
life to give the lie to that assertion, and to prove the 
power of the human spirit to advance up to the very 
point where it passes out of sight. 



aMONG the deepest longings of the human soul 
is the longing for union with its own. Earth 
does not afford that perfect union. In vain we clasp 
hands and look into each other's eyes; the longing 
is baffled and unfulfilled. What is this but a proph- 
ecy of unspeakable things that are yet to be? 



^K OGETIIER" is the great word of heaven; and 
V-/ there shall be place side by side, without jeal- 
ousy or confusion, for all its different meanings, 
for its tender intimacies that may not be invaded, 
for its little circles of trust, and its larger circh 
co-operation. There shall be room for free debate 
and generous rivalry, each putting forth the thing 
thai is in his soul, and not only rejoicing that others 



Death and Destiny 93 



shall do likewise, but confident that all will work 
together for the uncovering of that underlying har- 
mony which we call the Truth. 



CONSTELLATIONS of kindred personalities, 
supplementing each other, completing each 
other, fulfilling each other in some closer union than 
earth can know — that is a part of my dream of 
heaven. The family on earth is a faint prototype of 
that heavenly family, founded on spiritual relation- 
ships, which will be the most beautiful thing in all 
the city of God. 



IALL we be satisfied w T hen we awake? We 
1 shall be satisfied ; — but not in ways that we can 



KZJsh 

now foresee, perhaps not in ways that would satisfy 
us now. We shall be changed first, — and then we 
shall be satisfied. We shall be adjusted to those 
eternal realities which the great words God and Im- 
mortality dimly foreshadow. 



^T^E are going to live forever. This life is but a 
\U passing phase. Its successes, its failures, will 
soon be forgotten. It will all be the same in a thou- 
sand years — all but one thing, the Soul, its integrity; 
that is the only thing that matters, the only thing 
that endures. 



94 Perspectives of the Spirit 



^iCBEN the soul lias passed through the experience 
11/ of death, it will do1 say, "This is the end; lure 
I am for all eternity." It will say rather: "This is 
thf new beginning, the starting-point from which I 

go forward on the next st ;i.lt<' of the great Journey." 



OSAY not, Jt is one year less! It is one year 
more added to the possessions of the soul. We 
do not bid farewell to anything tonight. We take 
it all with us, every experience through which we 
have passed. It has entered into us. It lives on 
forever in the soul. And are we not richer, stronger, 
deeper, larger, because the st renin of life, with all 
its bitter and all its sweet, has flowed through us 
for another twelvemonth? 



^KHE soul is like a ship moving from port to port. 
V-/ taking on at each the things that wait for her 
there. It is only the sentimental passenger who 
sheds tears at the thought that we shall never see 
that scene again. The captain knows that we have 
been there i'^r a purpose and that safely stored away 
in the hold is the cargo that port had for us. And 
so the ship grows more and more richly and heavily 
Laden as she sails on through the years. Is she a 
better ship 1 Perhaps not. She may he the worse for 
wear. Still 1 think she rides steadier than when 
gaily she set forth. But, however that may be, there 
is more in her than there was then. And that is 
what the voyage is for. the lading of the ship. 



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